A GIANT “thinking machine,” able to apply electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks too difficult for previous solution, is now in use by the U. S. Army. It can compute 1,000 times faster than the most advanced calculating device previously known, can solve in hours problems which would take years on a mechanical machine and shows promise of revolutionizing long-range weather prediction and many other highly complicated sciences.

A MACHINE known as a mechanical correlator which takes certain information about an individual and after a few minutes’ work tells him just what occupation he should pursue has been used with success in fitting men into the right jobs. The machine operates on a pneumatic principle, using a perforated paper roll similar to that which produces music in player pianos.

NEC Information Systems’ Advanced Personal Computer III is an IBM PC compatible offering UNIX functionality. The MS-DOS operating system and GW BASIC are standard, and the multitasking, single-user UNIX System III operating system is available with special memory-management hardware.

COMPUTERS AND VIDEO appear to offer an endless variety of combinations, as this month’s cover by Robert Tinney depicts. With an increase in higher-power communication satellites that require smaller, less-expensive user antennas and electronics, and with the melding of television receivers and microprocessors, we might look ahead to the day when worldwide person-to-person visual as well as aural communication is based on personal computers and not on a direct descendant of Mr. Bell’s original invention.

The vocabulary of engineers or experimenters working with computers, synthesizers, electronic calculators and similar digital devices is replete with acronyms you should know. RAM is one, read on to find out what it is and how it’s used.

by DON LANCASTER

ANY MEMORY IS A STORAGE DEVICE THAT is given some information at some time and hopefully will return that identical information at a later date for reuse at least once. The most elemental unit of a memory storage system is the cell which can store one bit consisting of a “1-0” or “Yes-No” simple decision. Memory cells are often grouped into words of several bits each. These words can represent the number in a calculator, an instruction command in a computer, a tone and its duration in an electronic music composer, an alphanumeric character in a TV Typewriter and so on.

HOW MUCH IS ∛2589¹⁶
The Army’s ENIAC can give you the answer in a fraction off a second!

Think that’s a stumper? You should see some of the ENIAC’s problems! Brain twisters that if put to paper would run off this page and feet beyond… addition, subtraction, multiplication, division — square root, cube root, any root. Solved by an incredibly complex system of circuits operating 18,000 electronic tubes and tipping the scales at 30 tons!

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Although the complex modern electronic computers are commonly referred to as electronic “brains/7 scientists are not yet able to duplicate the human brain or memory. By comparison, man-made memories are dead and unexciting, according to Dr. F. Joachim Weyl of the Office of Naval Research.

Computer memories and such “brains” as airport traffic-control devices are what might be called set memories, Dr. Weyl explained. The totality of all information that could ever be stored in them is fixed and fully known.

“The significance of higher data communications rates has grown with the deregulation of the communications industry because communication costs are expected to rise. Gamma Technology is claiming that an eightfold increase in data rate (from 1200 bps to 9600 bps) will save several thousand dollars a year if 160K bytes of information are transmitted daily across the United States. Savings would be even greater if data were transmitted overseas.”

Sitting here on my 50 mbs internet connection I’m going to say that guess was a bit off. The total amount data they are talking about transmitting over a year is less than the size of the images in this post.

I also particularly liked that the searches on the third page are for “Computer, Privacy Surveillance, NSA and Tapping”. Just a hunch but I’d guess that the person who made that screenshot probably later joined the EFF.

Trends in Telecommunications

On-line search software and faster modems for PCs

by John Markoff

Now that the personal computer (PC) has won the battle for office desktop space, software developers are turning their attention toward programs that combine the storage capacity of mainframe computers with the local processing power of PCs. Although mainframes offer PC users access to huge on-line databases of specialized information, how to get to the information and bring it to the PC in a usable form is another question entirely.